Sunday, February 10, 2008

SGT BROOKS DRAWS A LINE

Brooks carefully surveying the scenery before committing his “memory” to paper

The Path He DescribesIt was a chilly November morning in Arlington, not long after sunrise, when Defense Protective Services Sgt. Chadwick Brooks met with Craig Ranke of Citizen Investigation Team at the Navy Exchange/former Citgo station just west of the Pentagon. After some initial discussion next to two bright yellow traffic barriers at the station’s northwest corner interviewer Craig Ranke asks Brooks to move the interview to the location he was actually at when he saw “Flight 77” fly over or near the station just 62 months earlier.

At 34:20 in the video they are at the spot, and Ranke has Brooks confirm “this is exactly where you were standing when you got out of the car.” As Ranke later explained for those who take this too literally, “there is no reason to expect Brooks himself to remember the exact parking space," but I think all are in agreement he picked the right general area. "From that vantage point," Ranke feels, "north or south of the Citgo would be clear as day.” Indeed, it would be as clear as left or right. Brooks said at 34:50 “we were able to see everything” indicating the plane coming from above, ahead, and to the right. At right here is the area Brooks first saw the plane passing from, over ("the middle") of some trees at the lot’s west edge. I’ve identified the fork-like structure in that space as an Air Force Memorial just finished before the interview was given.

His path description is fragmentary, but it seems that from over these trees, the plane passed via “the front of the station” over the ‘Jersey barriers’ where the interview started. But Brooks is also clear when questioned that it was not actually over the canopy - or the barriers - but more to the left, and entirely north of the station. “It was going on a straight line, a straight line towards the Pentagon,” he says at one point, and emphasizes again “it was a straight line” on which it “flew directly in front of the building” followed by “a great ball of fire [that] just goes straight up in the air.”

So he describes a straight path that came over the trees and the barrier, visual clues he recalls and has now had a chance to see, that takes it just north of the north canopy. Therefore his path described is something quite like this: Note that a straight line between those points comes nowhere near matching a straight line to the impact point; a severe right turn would be required. In comparison, Lagasse's path originated further north and took a much straighter line to the impact/flyover point. This is shown in the video after Brooks’ description but before Brooks drew his own path. I had to re-construct this one from the video interview, since he wasn’t asked to draw out this path right after he described it. When asked by Loose Change Forum member bileduct, Ranke explained “I simply forgot to get him to draw the flight path” at that time, which is perhaps understandable, with so many aspects to keep track of when doing this kind of work.

Back But with a SharpieLuckily, however, Ranke “had both officers [Brooks and Lagasse] booked on the same morning.” So after Brooks finished and left, he interviewed Lagasse, and apparently seeing his flight path reminded him; “after Lagasse's interview I realized that I forgot to ask Brooks to draw the flight path and called him on his cell phone. He agreed to come back and draw it so Lagasse stuck around to see what he would draw out of pure curiosity. That is what led to the segment with both of them.” [source] Some might wonder if this dynamic introduced some distortion to Brooks’ second recollection. “I suppose I should have taken Brooks across the street again,” Craig confessed, “but to be honest it didn't cross my mind as I knew he had already explained in detail how he saw the plane on the north side.” So he stayed on with Lagasse watching nearby.

At 58:43 in the video Brooks is back, pad in hand, under the north canopy again. Craig announces “okay, Sgt. Brooks is gonna draw for me on the image where he saw the plane fly.” As the subject faces north and scans left right perhaps over-much, Ranke explains “now he’s trying to assess the area again, recollect where he saw it, and then draw right there on that piece of paper for me.” At 59:07 Brooks decides he’s not in the right spot to draw it and walks north, with Craig commenting “he’s going over here to the north side from where he remembers it flying.” The camera follows with a calming “no pressure, no pressure.” and films the drawing action. Funky music fades in oddly repeating the word “time,” as Ranke urges the Sgt. To “make that nice and thick for me.” At about 1:01:30, Sgt. Lagasse walks over and peeks at it, and exclaims

Lagasse: “That's damn near perfect from what I saw. And we've never -- for the record we never talked to each other about this.” Brooks: “Yeah, for the record, we never -- we've never discussed it at all.” Ranke: “So you guys, neither of you guys have really talked about this with each other? Never in all these five years, and you both independently drew the flight path line pretty much exact.” Lagasse: “I know, I was -- the way this has been going -- who knew what he was going to put down there because he was in a different location. But it's right there, which makes me feel good about the way I remembered it.” Ranke: “So you're both pretty much 100% certain that that's what you remember the flight path being?” Brooks: “But from different locations, yes.”About a minute later they both chuckle strangely when asked if there was any chance it was south of the station. Of course not; however it happened, they both drew the same flight path, so it’s pretty well 100% proven. “Again,” Brooks affirms, “we never discussed this, that’s what I seen with my own eyes [...] "I know what I've seen with my own eyes. I know I was here, and I don't have to go around saying I was here.”

LCF member Bileduct (who was banned right after me) asked Ranke, after confirming the original described path and comparing it to the later drawn one, “is it fair to say that there is an inconsistency with what Sgt Brooks said he saw, and what he drew?” “No,” Ranke responded, “unless you expect humans to be computers. They only need to be correct about the approximate placement of the plane and this is all we should expect them to be correct about.” As Craig pointed out “You can't forget how these guys are all at the Navy Exchange/former citgo EVERY DAY […] They know the area.” So he happened to draw Lagasse’s flight path despite his own recalled memory and a visual review of an area he’s very familiar with, and CIT somehow feels this makes the discrepancy less suspicious.

An Ace or a Joker?The chuckles might be telling; Brooks’ account Is studded with clues the he might just be having fun with these guys. While discussing the altitude, he directs Ranke’s view to the left; “you see where that telephone pole is?” pointing. The camera follows and zooms in expectantly just before he yoinks the point, saying “it was up higher – it was up way higher than that. It was just – it was just unbelievable.” Sounding confused and with muted disappointment, Ranke responds “oh, okay.” At another time, he points to “the Pentagon, which is currently located over there.” Not so much ha-ha funny is where, while facing west, he indicates a flight path to his right, or north, whereas his previous account from 2001 had the plane coming up on his left. This means either a south of the Citgo path, or a 2006 interview done with him standing backwards in the scene, switching his directions to compensate. This is silly witness behavior; he may as well have been wearing his uniform backwards to flesh out the discrepancy.

But perhaps the biggest prank of them all, one with once fatal-seeming implications, has been brilliantly capitalized on by CIT. He described a “United Airlines” 737, with blue lettering on a white (actually ‘champagne’) paint job. United didn’t even use a blue-on-white standard until 2004, at the time using white letters on gray and dark blue. It almost seems Brooks did a quick Google image search just before the 2006 interview in order to yank his interviewers around, or to sabotage his account. Brooks at first seemed the odd man out compared to Lagasse’s clear description of a silver AA 757 with red letters, matching the most the widely reported clues, Turcios’ gray then silver plane with unsure markings, and Paik’s ‘black wings’ seen from below. Obviously he didn’t really see a UA plane, but CIT later turned the tables, making Brooks’ account a pivotal point of the ‘white plane’ construct, which they feel is pretty well proven. He saw a white drone airliner with a single blue stripe, and simply morphed it in his memory to something familiar. Now this leaves Lagasse’s, Turcios’, and Paik’s descriptions - and much of the rest of the body of evidence - the odd men out.

Likewise, it can’t be ruled out that Brooks was simply amusing himself when he later told the Citizen researchers that their documentary based on his testimony was an “eye-opener.” I’ve still not seen the direct quote from Brooks to this effect, but am relying on CIT’s insistence, first aired when Aldo Marquis asked Arabesque at the LCF on August 9 2007 “did you know that Sgt. Brooks already said our film was an "eye-opener" and "anything is possible" when it came to him being fooled? […] He said it was possible he was fooled, are you saying that you know for a fact that he wasn't?” [source] He repeated the same paragraph word-for-word in the same forum two days later, and Craig pasted it another two days later at JREF, again repeating Aldo’s awkward sentences; “is it possible he missed the impact because he too went to radio it in. Did Sgt. Brooks detail the impact? Or did he say "and what seemed to be a quick second the plane went in front of the building and a big boom, fireball explosion went off.". He said it was possible he was fooled, are you saying that you know for a fact that he wasn't?”

Sure, anything is possible, including that he was fooled by the fakery. It's also at least as possible that he saw what actually happened and rather than being fooled, was just fooling around when he talked to the camera in 2006.

3 comments:

Interesting, but it's hard to argue (or prove) that the witnesses are intentionally deceptive or playing around with what they said.

I tend to think that they believed what they saw, but are simply mistaken in the details. Putting yourself in their shoes, the difference between hallucinating a plane impacting a building and confusing the 5-10 seconds of seeing the plane in the air and the precise direction it flew at 500mph is pretty obvious.

Obviously the impact is more critical to the memory banks than the flight path, and common sense dictates which one you are less likely to misremember. Nobody is going to forget the sight of witnessing a plane hit the Pentagon, I don't care what twisted rules of logic and fake debating rhetoric you use.

Five years later, the obvious memory lapses with the flight path versus watching a plane impact are (and should to most with common sense be) even more apparent.

Well I'm no memory expert, so I could be wrong, but I don't feel time is a good enough reason for his odd recollections. What're the chances his error would wind up lining up with Lagasse's error so well? It's like the 'perspective' issues that kept making the 13th and Poe witnesses see the wrong trajectory - all of them erring the same way, towards ENE rather than north. When 'errors' lines up like that, they seem like something more.

However it's always good to have a 'simple' and reasonable explanation offered as we plunge into the depths of paranoia.

And don't forget, white plane with blue letters... is that really an AA plane he saw? (BTW I forgot to mention it but he says 'champagne,' referring to a white booth catching orange-pink sunrise light - what a coincidence his plane was the same color that booth was right then.)

And I'm not sure about the whole 'the flight path is more perceptible/memorable than the impact' thing. I see what they mean, but to me they're pretty close to equal. It would be weird for them to be wrong on either. A plane that was really on your left isnt likely to be recalled on your right, nor a flyover confused with impact. The interviews are plainly weird and discrepant - What's ridiculous tho is how they decide 100% the path is right but impact wrong. ONE account of a pull-up. That's it. One, from a guy who wasn't even shown in the video where he says he was, who had previously said he was INSIDE the station, who saw the 'pull-up' but was still unclear on impact vs. flyover. Off in his own little world... The magic of improv. Did CIT originally stand for comedy improv team?

The Frustration Ends Here... Or Starts, Depending...

"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers."- Thomas Pynchon, Jr.

"The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments."- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, section 191

---

The "9/11 Truth" scene has made major inroads on the mainstream American psyche in the last two years. A record number of people now believe the government, at best, allowed the attacks to occur. Personally, I'm convinced the kernel of this is the same deep-seated suspicion I and many others have felt since that fateful morning. But the reason it's coming out in such a flood now has numerous explanations, one of which is the cumulative effect of various alternate theories, most notably the strain spread via the video Loose Change.---It is my opinion that these arguments have swelled the movement for all the wrong reasons. The “hard proof” crowd have claimed to find literally hundreds of “smoking gun” clues left laying out in the open. While some have real validity, many, on closer inspection, are fraudulent. Yet somehow the worst arguments get more air play and capture more attention and so the “Truth” movement has become dominated by the desire not to provide the most rational explanation but the one most opposite to the official story. Beyond providing endless distraction and requiring endless de-bunking (and they keep coming back!), this approach alienates intelligent skeptics, whom we need on our side.---It's not for me to say who has intentionally misled and who is simply wrong, but herein I hope to help break the spell of one of their key arguments – no big Boeing jet hit the Pentagon on 9/11 - in hopes of getting some people off that train before it crashes for good. Luckily others have gone before me, and this once crowded carriage is steadily emptying. Through careful research, I have found as have others that almost all evidence points clearly to a 757 as the attack vehicle, piloted by whatever means, and in the process have exposed a long thread of apparent disinformation running from 9/11 to the present and continuing despite all evidence to the current day.

---Truth is a road, not a destination, and it's much safer to walk.---Please feel free to leave comments. I hope I've convinced, provoked, or otherwise effected people with my words here and would love to see any feedback, positive or negative. You can post anonmymously.---Words about The Frustrating Fraud and its author:

"This site [...] does what few do -- take on the Pentagon no-plane/no-jetliner theory head-on and expose the errors of those promoting it."

"[Y]ou’ve done a nice job on continuing to gather facts and reality based information about the Pentagon attack. Some of the comments gave me a laugh or two as well. You’ve accomplished far more in the past couple years in trying to separate facts from fiction than I ever did with that giant 1.5 million+ reads thread! - "Cat Herder" via e-mail

"Caustic Logic made a sad attempt to neutralize our info by casting doubt on us personally. It's pathetic and obvious. And he's a bad writer too. It's like he is a cointelpro flunkie but he keeps trying!"- Craig Ranke

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